This is your warning that there may be spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t read Silver Elite and plan to, you may want to stop now.
This is NOT an ARC review., and in fact, I paid extra money to Book of the Month Club when I chose it, because their version of Silver Elite has sprayed edges. Prior to seeing it offered as one of the picks for Book of the Month, I had never heard of Silver Elite, or the author, Dani Francis. The day after I ordered it, I started seeing videos about it popping up all over YouTube, and not in a good way.
Even after checking out a few of those videos, most of which were less about the story and more about the identity of the author, I went into this book with an open mind. I was encouraged by the fact that it had a high rating on GoodReads, but I avoided reading any actual reviews because I didn’t want to have any further preconceived notions of what to expect than I already had.
Unfortunately, avoiding those outside influences did not aid my opinion of this book. This was the first physical book I have ever annotated, and if it weren’t for the annotating, I would have set this book aside long before the halfway point. The best thing I can say about Silver Elite is that I finished it and don’t have to pick it up again. The only thing that kept me motivated to finish was the pleasure I found in marking all the things that irritated me, or did not make sense in the novel.
The one preconceived notion that I did have going into Silver Elite came from comments I had seen at some point referring to the book as The Hunger Games for adults, and the heroine, Wren Darlington compared to Katniss Everdeen, but neither of those things is even close to the truth. And maybe that’s why I hated this book so much, because I loved The Hunger Games and this was nothing like that.
To begin with, the world of The Hunger Games was well developed and drew the reader into the world of Katniss. And despite how messed up things were, the way the world worked made a sort of sense, or at least you could understand how it got to the point it was at. That is not the case with the world of Silver Elite.
So many things in this novel were not explained, and even more didn’t make sense. Other than a few hints about environmental changes we have no real idea how the world came to be the way it is. Why is The Continent divided up into wards? How did it come to be divided up? What was the source of the contagion that caused Mods to come about? Where did it come from, was it man made or naturally occurring? How did The Blacklands come to be? Why do they seem to have rather advanced technology but there seems to be little to no interaction with other parts of the world? There is a hint about a past war, but no indication of why it was fought, or what the result was.
How does a 22 year old come to be in charge of the most elite unit in the country’s armed forces? Yeah his dad is the apparent ruler of the country, if you can call The Continent that, but how does that qualify him for such an important position at such a young age? He is, after all, only two years older than Wren.
Speaking of Wren, how can a woman who has been trained for 14 years to protect herself, be so incompetent at taking care of herself and avoiding trouble? She has no self control, no common sense, and no sense of self-preservation. But she does have a huge ego.
And don’t even get me started on the so-called romance in this book. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m pretty sure that any attraction I felt for someone would be immediately turned off if I knew their ultimate goal was to kill me and eradicate anyone like me. And even if that weren’t the case, his views on things were horrifying. Oh, but he doesn’t personally kill mods…he just enslaves them and sends them to labour camps, so it’s all okay.
There is so much more I could say, but I don’t want this review to get too long. Suffice it to say, I do not recommend Silver Elite, and unless am suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity, I will not be reading any subsequent books in the series. Currently, I have no desire to see what happens in future books.
Life, Tea, and Everything 